Baseball card trading, like baseball itself, has been a part of American culture, and baseball cards are treasured collections and valuable commodities of not only many children but many adults alike. A baseball trading card typically displays a photograph of a baseball player on the front side, and career statistics or other data of the player are usually printed on the back of the card. Conventionally, baseball trading cards are made of paperboard or other paper-like material. The obvious drawback of paper cards is that they do not endure repeated shuffling and handling, and are damaged easily.
Recently, baseball trading cards made of sheet metal are becoming increasingly popular. One of the reasons for their popularity is, of course, that they are much more durable than paper cards and therefore are more "permanent." Another reason for their popularity is that the workability of metal allows the metal cards to be shaped, such as by embossing, to create visual effects not easily achievable on paper cards. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,215,792 to Miller and assigned to the same assignee of the present invention discloses such an informative card made of a single sheet of metal. The four edge portions of the informative card comprise hems folded on the rear side of the card. The front side of the card contains a central display region which is offset slightly towards the rear so as to leave a raised peripheral ledge framing the central display region. The resultant card is similar to conventional paperboard baseball cards in thickness but has a more attractive appearance. Because the edges of the card are folded, the metal information card is generally free of sharp edges and sharp points. However, a short length of the raw edge of the sheet metal remains at each corner of the card, and such raw edges, albeit very short, may still cause safety concerns.
It has also been proposed to make baseball cards with a combination of metal and paper. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,363,964 to Hexter discloses a baseball trading card having a metal substrate holding a printed cardboard insert in the front. The four edge portions of the metal substrate are rolled towards the printed cardboard such that the metal edges grip the cardboard and hold it in position. A significant disadvantage of such a paper/metal trading card is that it is several times thicker than conventional paper baseball cards due to its thick rolled edges. Thus, the paper/metal trading card does not look like a conventional baseball trading card but, rather, resembles a miniature framed picture. The paper/metal trading card also cannot be shuffled like a conventional trading card. Such deviation from the look and feel of conventional baseball trading cards makes the paper/metal trading cards undesirable to many collectors. Another disadvantage of such a card is its relatively high cost because each card requires both a printed cardboard element and a formed metal sheet.
Besides the respective drawbacks of the prior art all-metal or paper/metal baseball trading cards as described above, another unsatisfactory aspect common to those cards is that the formation of each card requires several sheet metal processing steps. Thus, to form the card of Miller, the metal sheet has to be first formed into blanks, and several subsequent steps are performed to form the edges of a blank into hemmed edges. Similarly, the formation of the card of Hexter requires a blanking step to form the metal blank, and other metal forming steps are required to roll the edges of the metal blank towards the cardboard insert. Because each metal processing step requires a distinct tool set and machine setup, the cost of a card depends directly on the number of metal forming steps required to form the card. Since a baseball card is intended to be a relatively inexpensive item, it is highly desirable to simplify the manufacturing process to reduce the cost of the card.